


and the penny drops

by gayforroxane



Series: blood and guns and guts [1]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Canon Divergence, M/M, Murder, Sexy-times, Touching, archie bites? but like in a sexy way not a weird way, dark!jarchie, dead grundy? so like you're welcome, i feel bad cause this is non ace jug and we deserve the rep sorry my fellow ace mates, i mean i guess it could be weird, its not super violent but its definitely violent fair warning, jughead swears a lot its like my thing, mature for violence and non-explicit sex, non-ace jughead, this is cuter than it seems
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-27
Updated: 2017-02-27
Packaged: 2018-09-27 05:01:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9969062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gayforroxane/pseuds/gayforroxane
Summary: Geraldine Grundy disappears on October the 17th, 2017.Though her body isn't found for a year and a half, Archie knows what happened, and who did it.He knows why.(jughead does archie a favour, there are literal confessions of love complete with planet, sun, and sky similes, some sexy times and an awkward conversation)





	

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so this is violent guys, and there is some definite torture, and a dead person, so just, fair warning.  
> Also  
> Please don't murder people, like this is my PSA, don't do it, I don't condone it, it's not a good plan, please don't murder people even if they're rapists.

On October 17th, 2017, Geraldine Grundy goes missing. 

Her car is found on the interstate, a mile and a half outside Riverdale. 

There is no blood, no tissue, no broken windows, or bones, or heartstrings, just a piece of paper on the driver’s seat

_she fucked him and fucked him up and you won’t ever find her alive, Sheriff Keller_

_xxx_

The writing is typed, labeled in Helvetica with careful, accurate kerning. The note is never released to the public, a dead-end without fingerprints, or handwriting, though their most important piece of evidence. The Sheriff is not a stupid man. He has sat in his office, behind that desk for long enough to know the difference between a good killer, and an exceptional one. 

It all comes down to brains. 

Leaving a note, especially such a personal one, points to ‘good.’ But printing it, leaving a perfectly clean car, without bumps or bruises or blood, without signs of rage, or disorientation, wavers the compass needle towards incredibly, dangerously competent. 

He asks people to come forward with any information concerning Geraldine Grundy, or her past. Betty Cooper and Veronica Lodge show him the ID they found, the gun, tucked into the locked metal box inside her car. (He lets them off with a warning, surprised at the lack of evidence that it was ever broken into). They tell him that he’ll want to talk to Archie Andrews. 

When he finds out about the relationship that started in July, he feels the bile rise in the back of his throat. He presses a hand down onto Archie’s shoulder, and says, “It wasn’t your fault, son.” The kid’s voice breaks on a sob. He doesn’t bring him back for the official interview for a couple days, letting the boy settle back into his own skin. 

“How long did your relationship with Ms. Grundy, uh, Ms. Gibson go on for?”

“Two and a half months.”

“Were you aware that it was illegal?”

“Uh, ye-yeah. Yes.”

“Was anyone else aware of your relationship?” 

Archie hesitates. The Sheriff raises an eyebrow. 

“Just Veronica, and Betty, Sir.”

He hums. “You sure about that, son?”

Archie frowns. “Of course, Sheriff, I didn’t want anyone to know –”

“I believe you, Archie, relax. Now, I don’t want to ask this, but where were on the17th of October at around 2 o’clock in the afternoon?” 

“Football practice, I think, I, uh, I could double check with the coach…”

 

On October 17th, Geraldine Grundy pulls over when she sees her former student, Jughead Jones, sitting on the side of the road, a huge backpack at his feet, and a lost expression on his face. He’s leaning back against an old green jeep. Her tacky sunglasses, and too-short jean skirt make an appearance in front of him. 

“Jughead?” She asks, voice sweet, “You have car trouble? The walk into town isn’t too bad.”

He stands, scuffing beaten converse against the beaten ground (with the feet of a beaten boy), but doesn’t say anything, his head tilted down towards his feet. She moves a little closer, placing a tentative hand on his upper arm. He grins. Soft, and smooth, and agile, his lifted hand is holding a cloth to her nose and mouth.

She doesn’t have time to scream, though her eyes go wide and wild over the rim of her glasses. 

He smiles.

 

Archie sinks into the booth across from him at Pop’s, his movements careful, slightly hesitant. 

“Ah. Mr. Popular Football God has come to visit, hmm?” 

The keyboard mutters under his fingertips. 

“Were you going to tell me?” 

The muttering stops with the beating of his heart, before starting up again. The muttering has turned to the hush of boys’ voices in a treehouse late at night, under the stars where they thought their parents would never know. 

“Tell you what,  _Archiekins_? That your life is a mess? That love triangles are nothing more than a demonstration of teenage angst and raging hormones? Well, --”

“About Grundy.”

There’s a pause of the boys in the treehouse, late at night, at eight years old. 

“You mean Jennifer Gibson, your psychotic 31-year-old teacher who you had a clandestine and  _illegal_ love affair with? That ‘Grundy’?”

“C’mon, Jug, you’re gonna make me spell it out for you?”

For a few moments, he just stares at Archie, flicking over the freckles and the cheekbones and the bright, soft-looking hair. When he meets his eyes, blue/green/grey against warm, heady, hot chocolate brown, he smirks. “Worked it out, huh, pal?” 

Archie pales and flushes all at the same time. His mouth somehow gets paler, the skin around his eyes, but his cheeks, his neck, the backs of his head, become a gentle Betty Cooper pink. He kept his friend’s name out of the Sheriff’s office because Jughead would have done it for him. Lying to the Sheriff through his teeth was going to become frighteningly easy if he wasn’t careful. Of course Jughead knew about Geraldine, because he has some kind of ridiculous  _Archie-is-doing-something-stupid-and-or-illegal-or-both_  spidey sense that he’s had since they were seven years old.

Jughead Jones was Archie Andrews’ best friend, and would do anything to protect him. 

For a moment, he wonders how he did it. Was it a gun? A knife? His hands?

Jughead’s heads have always been his favourite part of the other boy (though his mouth, and his laugh, and his smirk, and his skin were up there as well), the only part of his body not covered with moles (Archie didn’t know this for sure, but knew he wanted to. God, he wanted to know). He has difficulty placing them around her neck. He wasn’t a tactile person day to day; would he be tactile in a murder? 

Murder. 

His best friend is a murderer. 

_For him._

“Yeah,” he says softly, speaking to Jughead and the neon lights of Pop Tate’s, careful against the darkness of the midnight hours. “You knew I wouldn’t tell Sheriff Keller. You knew I’d figure it out.” 

Jughead gives him a tiny, genuine smile. It still fills him with the same bubbling warmth that it has since they were seven. 

That had been the first time Jughead had smiled. The first day of the second grade, when Reggie Mantle shoved him, calling him a freak, and Archie had been there in an instant, all flying fists and righteousness. He’d introduced himself to Jughead between a nosebleed, and the teacher’s reprimands, smiling like the rising sun. He’d smiled in return, offering a hand. Archie’s blood had smeared over his palm. 

“I did.” 

“How?”

Jughead huffs a breath out of a verypink mouth. Archie’s eyes flick to it. “Despite everything, Archie, you’re my best friend, and you know me  _very_  well.”

 

He loads her into the back of his jeep, careful ropes around her wrists, around her ankles, before taking her to Sweet Water River. Two lives gone in one place. Maybe they’d be ghosts. It’s a sunny Tuesday afternoon, bright off the water, the birds cooing the trees. He waits for her to wake up, moving as far back into the forest as he could. He picks at his tee-shirt, the ‘S’ standing out like a praise, like a comment, like a rambling directly from his father. He tosses a gun from one hand to the other. 

When she makes a tiny noise, shifting, he grins, leaning over her. 

He won’t make this lengthy, but he will make it hurt. 

“You know,” He says, voice casual, an exchange about the weather, the state of the river, as he screws a silencer onto the gaping mouth of the gun, “You’ll have to thank my dad for the weapon of choice, Jennifer, it comes right from the Southside Serpents, a little gift from them to me to you.” He laughs lightly. “Even  _they_  want to see a rapist, and a pedophile, and a master manipulator  _dead_ , Geraldine.”

“Jughead, you don’t –”

“Oh, I do, Grundy.” In a moment, the butt of the gun is pressed up against her forehead. It drags down her face. “See, Archie may have ditched me for you, and he’s quite frankly a terrible friend most of the time, but –” He raises both eyebrows at her, plopping his weight onto her stomach. “—I couldn’t let you leave without your  _sentence,_ could I? Considering you don’t even deserve a proper trial, Gibson, I guess I’m going to offer the best means of punishment for a crime. What do you think a child predator deserves, hmm?

A couple marks?”

A quick movement, a gasp, and there is a bruise forming on her cheek. 

“Hmm. Not very satisfying.” 

A lazy reach behind him, a scream, and there is a bullet hole in her left kneecap. 

He smiles. “What made you decide to fuck him, huh?” 

She screams again, and this is going to get old quickly, because now there’s blood coming from her right kneecap in sluggish waves. 

She twists underneath, trying to buck him off, making aborted grunts, and whimpering as she shifts. He grabs her hand from where it’d been curling into the dirt below her, gripping at her wrist, pulling the trigger, feeling the bones break, the blood spurt, covering her short, manicured nails. She’s a quarter of Jesus Christ, and Jughead regrets putting a hole in her hand. She doesn’t deserve that similarity, even in his whole-heatedly atheist mind.  

“Was it his body? His  _talent_? Or do you just have a thing for kids, is that your  _kink_? Is that what gets you off at night?” 

He presses the mouth, wide and red and raw, dripping blood, to her forehead. 

“Say it, Geraldine.” 

“I-I-I’m s-sorry, please –”

Jughead scoffs, knocks it across her face again, building up the bruises. 

“I don’t want to hear your apology, perv, I want to hear you say that you get off on fucking  _children_ , because that’s what you do, isn’t it? Isn’t it, Jennifer?” 

The mouth is more insistent, sharp with teeth. 

 

“Why did you do it?”

Archie’s voice is soft in the dinner, over the careful hum of the crooning voice of Frank Sinatra. 

Jughead rolls his eyes, and goes back to typing, reaching up occasionally to adjust his beanie, or slip his fingers over the collar of his shirt. Archie’s eyes are tugged to his collarbones, deep, and speckled with moles, and he wonders if that skin was ever coated in her blood. The possibility doesn’t make him uncomfortable, doesn’t make him squirm. He shifts a little in his chair, drums his fingers on the table, moving out of a complete opposite play to discomfort.

“There is a ridiculously, insanely, wonderfully simple answer to that question, Arch, and if you don’t know it I’m gonna break a couple of your teeth.” It’s flatter than stale pop on a hot afternoon, and the words are so  _mild_ , so  _lacking_ , so  _Jughead_ , that gives Archie a bubbling little laugh. 

Jughead grins against the straw in his mouth, making careful eye contact with the boy across the booth as he bites down. 

Archie’s eyes, reflecting the red neon lights, go dark around the edges. The smile he gives Jughead is slow, and syrupy, and even while his eyes express what he doesn’t want to say, he laughs. He laughs like a little boy, young joyful, laughing with his whole body, head tilting back, a hand coming up to rest on his own ribs, mouth a blood-red smear over his teeth. 

“You love me,” he says, still letting laughter seep out from behind his white, white pearly whites. 

“Something like that,” Jughead says, slurping loudly from his milkshake. 

 

“I-I-I-I get o-off on f-f-fucking children.” 

“Good girl, Geraldine.” 

He shoots her between the eyes, standing over her body, one foot planted firmly on a bloody knee. 

She stops screaming her he pulls the trigger, and the bullet buries itself in her frontal lobe. 

 

“Something  _like_  that?” 

“Well, I’m  _in_  love with you, and the media tells me those are two different things, with two very different connotations.” 

Archie flushes in surprise. “Really?”

“I did murder someone for you, Andrews, you think I do that for all the pretty boys I know?”

“You know other pretty boys?” 

“Touché.”

 

A year, and a half later, after Geraldine Grundy has been forgotten, a detective calls Sheriff Keller to tell him that the case of Jennifer Gibson’s disappearance has been declared a homicide, and is being taken over by the FBI. Her body was found two states over. 

They question Archie deliberately, loudly, for weeks. 

They threaten to charge him for interfering in a murder investigation. 

He smiles, and says he doesn’t know anything. 

The reality of it is, there is no proof. 

There no fingerprints, or fibers, no other blood or DNA. The bullets in her kneecaps, in her brain, the residue on her hand, belong to a Glock 22, which narrows the suspect pool to 60%-70% of the police in America. There are two people in the state with repressors for their Glock 22s, and they have no connection with Jennifer Gibson, or Geraldine Grundy. 

Archie lets slip that while they were in a relationship, she told him that she had been married to an abusive man with a love of pushing her down stairs, and drinking. 

They interview him, find his alibi of ‘drinking’ to be sketchy, put it down as a rage murder, and throw him in jail for twenty-five to life. 

Jughead is slightly offended, because really, he did a better job than a 40-year-old man with a drinking problem and an IQ of 75 ever could. Archie swings an arm around his shoulder, kisses him full on the mouth, and says, ‘You’re smarter than the cops, Juggie, bask in that for a little bit.’ 

 

“I’m in love with you too, you know.” 

They’re walking back to the Andrews, after a full-fledged argument about the overstuffed bag sitting at Jughead’s feet under the table. 

_There’s a reason we’re friends, Jug, you have to trust me, please, let us help_

_Archie –_

_Jug. Come home with me. Please, Juggie, I need to know you’re safe_

Jughead turns to look at Archie, watching his profile against the streetlamps, warm, glowing slightly, a permanent light fixture in his black box theatre life. His freckles are starting to fade at this point in the year, but his hair is started to grow out, the top of his head lit like a beacon. His shoulders pull against the fabric of his shirt, the letterman jacket makes him bulky. 

He’s heard the girls at school call Archie ‘hot’, and frankly, he’s inclined to agree, but the word has such a superficial, surface-layer syntax that it makes his stomach roll. Archie is everything  _but_  superficial. Endless, and eternal, and the least ephemeral thing in Jughead’s very flighty life. He’s stunning. He literally makes people stop, and process, think and pause and consider. 

“Yeah,” Jughead says. “Though I can’t bring myself to understand  _why_.” 

Archie is such a fucking  _sun_. He’s the sun, or a goddamn supernova in Jug’s fabric-stitched sky, and he’s just the sky, the black sky, that Archie sits in, brings warmth to. 

He tells his filter to go fuck itself, and tells his friend that as he watches on in shock. 

“Juggie,” Archie breathes, stopped in the middle of the road, staring. “If I’m some sun, or whatever, you’re the sky that’s got all the fucking stars, and the moons, and the planets.  _Juggie_ , you’ve got all of it _, and_ all of me.” 

For a split second, neither of them move. And then, they’re both moving, pushing towards each other, mouths pressing up against one another, rough, and skidding like kids down a waterpark slide. Jughead has one hand buried in soft smells-like-waffles-and-sunshine hair, tugging, and grinning into the groans Archie slips into his mouth. The other is dripping just below the edge of Archie’s boxers, tugged up over his belt line, under his letterman jacket and tee-shirt. He pulls his hand up his back, under his shirt, dragging his nails over the skin. 

Archie has one hand on Jughead’s neck, hot on cold skin like a brand without the sting. His other hand smooths over pale, cookies-in-the-cookies-and-cream mole speckled skin under his shirt, around to his back, and down his ass, hitching one leg up around his hip. Jughead laughs against his mouth, smiling when Archie lifts him up like it’s nothing, pressing him back, and back, and back, until they hit some car, and they both moan, echoing slightly because the friction just became – 

The alarm on the car starts bleeping, cracking like thunder, rolling over the quiet street, and they’re snapped out of their dazes, lips swollen and tingling, breathing deep, the front of their pants tighter than usual. Jughead loses it, pressing his face his Archie’s neck, where he’s still balanced against the car.

“Archie,” he says between giggles, “Put me down, we gotta go, what if this is Alice Cooper’s car, oh my god,  _Arch_.” 

Archie laughs into his neck, too spaced out to consider consequences, or  _dear god_  Alice Cooper catching him making out with ‘some disgusting grunge boy from the Southside.’

“What the  _hell_  is going on?” 

There’s a very righteous, and a very concerned Hermione Lodge standing in front of them, and they both blink. The car has stopped blaring, and there’s a set of car keys dangling from her fingers. 

She stops, mouth open, eyes flicking over red mouths, and white teeth, and flushed faces, and  _Jughead Jones_  pressed up against a  _car_  by  _Archie Andrews_. 

“So,” Jughead says with a lazy grin, curling his hands through Archie’s hair, “What are you doing on this end of town, so late at night, Ms. Lodge?” He twists his head to look at the house behind them over his shoulder. “Burning the midnight oil with Mr. Andrews? Or –” He smirks, holding her eyes. “—something else?” 

She blinks, reminded so suddenly of this boy’s father from high school, still a little cynical, still a little funny, that her head spins. Maybe that’s why the words that come out of her mouth are so young, so much like her own daughter. “Well, maybe Archie wasn’t the only Andrews to get lucky tonight, Mr. Jones.” 

Jughead snorts, tossing his head against the car, cackling as Archie drops him in shock. 

“Oh my god,” Archie says, wide-eyed, and a little scared. 

“Don’t worry about it, honey,” Hermione says with a cat-like smile, “We’ll explain when you’re older.”

“Oh, please don’t. Ever. I… oh my  _god_.” 

 

When they get inside, and Hermione does whatever the opposite of the walk of shame is  _back_ to his dad’s room, Archie closes the door to his room, and promptly shoves Jughead up against said door, crushing his mouth against the other boys, curling through raven-dark hair, catching the beanie between his fingers and throwing it across the room. 

“Arch,” Jughead mutters as the other boy starts to bite his way down his neck. “Arch, _Arch, Archie, fuck_.” The words get increasingly louder the harder Archie bites, the hand against the back of his neck holding him in place. “Don’t—” He breaks off with a high-pitched whine when Archie sucks his earlobe into his mouth, panting against his skin. “—Don’t ever — ah, fuck, _harder_ , Archie — throw my hat across the _fuck ah, ah, Jesus Christ_ — the room — again.” 

“Jug,” Archie murmurs, trailing his hands down to the other boy’s ass, slipping them into the pockets, tucking his thumbs under the belt line. He hitches him up higher, mouthing at Jughead’s shirt, grinning when he finds his nipples, moaning when Jug tugs on his hair. “Stop talking.” he growls the words out, pressing more insistently into his skin. 

Jughead whimpers when Archie bites down, tonguing through the fabric. “O — fucking hell, Archie, _yes, yes, yes, yes_ — okay. Fuck me. _Fuck_ , Archie.” 

Archie slides him back down the wall, bringing both hands up, one on his cheek, the other pinching his nipple through his shirt. He licks over the seam of Jughead’s lips, laughs when he swears. 

“I can do that,” he says. 

“Fucker,” Jughead snaps, laughing, as Archie tosses him down onto the bed, bracketing him in with his arms, smiling as he kisses him. 

 

The next morning they wake up with stale mouths, bare down to their, well everything, with Fred Andrews and Hermione Lodge standing over them. They’re buried beneath the blankets, Jughead sprawled over Archie, their hands linked together, his head buried in his neck, one leg thrown across his hips. 

Jughead grins, and raises his eyebrow at Hermione, who sticks her tongue out, rolling her eyes. He laughs. 

“Morning, Mr. Andrews,” he says, while Archie’s face and neck and chest start to match the colour of his hair. 

Fred sighs. 

“I really didn’t need, or want to know, boys. Archie,” he says, staring until his son makes eye contact. “Jughead is… incredibly loud. Please—” he looks pained, face tight, voice slightly desperate. “—Keep that in mind, next time, okay?” 

Archie nods, biting down on his lower lip, sitting up against the headboard with his arms crossed over his chest. “S-sure, dad.” 

Before they leave the room, Hermione turns around. Jughead sits up, slipping the blanket down his body as he does, showing off the trail that falls from both side of his neck, over his collarbones, down into his ribs and his stomach, of tiny red and purple marks. She raises an eyebrow, glances at Archie. 

“Okay, one: Archie ease up on the hickies, he looks like he was mauled by a wild animal.” 

“Hermione —”

“Hush, Fred.”

“Ms. Lodge—”

“You too, Archie,” Jughead says, elbowing him. “And two?” 

She smiles. “Two: you boys need condoms? Lube?” 

Somehow, it doesn’t sound weird. It’s not tinged with anything close to pervy, or overly invested, it’s just there, as if this were Veronica, instead of her mother, casually inquiring about their sexual health. 

(Archie will continue to insist that, yeah, Juggie, Veronica’s mom asking about our sex-life is weird no matter what angle you look at it from, you really can’t deny that, Jug. Just because the two of you have some weird, pathological friendship—)

“We had some,” Jughead says, leaning over the bed, sorting through their clothes. His back is covered in scratches, falling in nearly straight, parallel lines, and Fred shakes his head, huffing through his nose. “But, we’re out now so, those’d be good, if you could, Ms. Lodge.”

“Hermione, please," She says elegantly, watching Fred with amusement painting her face. 

“Jesus, boys,” Fred says, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“But we need some lube,” Jughead continues, ignoring him. When he sits up again, he’s sliding his beanie onto his head, over his ears, slightly crooked. 

Hermione nods, thumbing at her ear. 

“I’ll go pick some up today, it’ll be in the cabinet over the sink?”

“Sure,” he says, glancing at Archie, and grinning. “What?” he teases, “You don’t wanna talk to your dad about the frankly phenomenal sex we just had?” 

“Jug!” 

Fred’s out of the room so quickly, he trips on the door frame, and Hermione starts giggling as she leaves, closing the door behind her. 

Jughead starts to laugh, a big, ugly laugh complete with snorts, and sighs, and voice cracks, and usually Archie thinks that that laugh is the cutest thing in the universe. Today, though…

“Oh my god,” Jug says between giggles, “Did you see your dad’s face?”

Archie shoves him so hard he tips out of bed, onto the clothes below, still laughing.  

“Would it help if your dad knew I was a murderer? Or would that not help my case?” He’s still laughing a little bit, so when Archie leans over the bed, pulling him up by his shoulders, he yelps, surprised. 

“Archie, what’re you —”

His words are muffled by Archie’s mouth on his, pushing and insistent. 

“You love me,” he pants, moving Jug’s legs to straddle his hips, mouth trailing down his jaw, over the same, aching marks. “God, I love you.”

“Wow, if I knew — holy _flying_ fuck Arch — that this was gonna be — shit, yes, _ow,_ that hurts, _more, please_ — your reaction  I would’ve — for fucks sake _let me talk_ — killed someone for you years ago.” 

Archie pulls back, his hands moving over Jughead’s body, down his ribs, and thighs, up into his hair. “Jughead, if you get caught—”

“Then you’re claiming you know nothing about it.”

“What?” Archie says, brow furrowed. “No way, I’m not letting you take the fall for something you did for me, Juggie —”

“And I’m not letting you go to jail as an accomplice for a murder, Arch. What about you music?”

“What about your novel? What about Jellybean?” 

This gardens silence from Jughead for a few moments. 

“Well,” he says, “That doesn’t really matter considering I won’t get caught.”

Archie laughs, kisses him softly. “You better not.”

There’s a few light, sucking kisses placed on Archie’s neck, before Jughead pulls away. “Does it turn you on that I murdered someone? Because I’m gonna have to put that kink in the gutter, like, right now.”

Archie laughs against his skin, tilting his head back when Jughead starts to mouth at his neck again, leaving tiny red marks as he goes. “It… I don’t know. You love me, Jug, you’re in love with me, and it just reminds me how lucky I am and how much I - I love you.” Jughead presses closer for a moment, breathing deeply, his arms wrapped around Archie’s shoulders and waist in the tentative rays of morning seeping through his bedroom window. 

“You love me.” 

Though it isn’t a question, it sounds a bit like one, tilted up at the end, ever-so-slightly seasick. 

“Yes.” There’s no hesitation in his voice, no doubts. “I love you, Jughead Jones.” 

Jughead grins, biting down on his lower lip. Archie’s eyes catch on it. 

“God, you have such a one track mind, Arch,” he says, returning to biting at his neck, trailing under jaw, to his collarbones, and _holy shit_ pecs. “And I murdered an abusive, pedophile, rapist, manipulator for you, so let’s be real, of course I love you.” 

He laughs when Archie flips them over, burying Jughead beneath him, moans when there’s a mouth moving down his body, and _oh._

Hmm, one track mind, indeed. 

 

At the end of that year, they’re given the title of Couple-of-the-Year, which makes Jughead  _very, incredibly_  uncomfortable, because

“They called me fucking Forsythe, Arch.  _Forsythe_. _Fuck_ my family and it’s _fucking traditional name_ for _fucks_ sake.” 

"Well," Betty pipes up from where she's sprawled across Veronica on the couch across from them, "When you and Archie adopt you can give them normal names, like, I don't know, Michael or something."

Jughead glares at her. 

Archie spends all day staring at Jughead, watching his mouth, or his ass, or his hands, or his smile, captivated by the thought of  _the rest of our lives_ with this boy. 

 

In their Senior year, Archie threatens the yearbook kids with bodily harm if they do it again. 

_Archie Andrews and Jughead Jones III, Couple of the Year (not pictured) because someone got salty with the yearbook committee. #saltinecrackerarchieandrews_

 

(the hashtag trends on local twitter for a week-and-a-half)

 

 

Geraldine Grundy is the first and only murder Jughead Jones III ever committed, and he was never investigated for it. 

Though you may not believe it, Archie Andrews may have something to do with the disappearance of Reggie Mantle the Magnificent in Senior year. He’s found three days later, still alive, still breathing, with eight broken ribs, a shattered collarbone, a twisted knee, and two broken hands, as well as a nose that’s partway into his brain. 

He never shoves Jughead Jones around in the hallway again. 

Though, that night, Jughead does a lot of shoving. 

Against a door, which has sort of become their signature move, enough that when Fred hears it happen, he's at the Lodge's immediately. Hermione just laughs at him for being sexiled by his kid and his boyfriend. 

 

"What should we name him?" 

Jughead pauses, catching his son's hand with his index finger. 

"Well, Gerald is definitely an option."

Archie frowns. "I thought you didn't want any weird names."

Jughead just stares at him, one eyebrow raised, knowing the penny is in the air on his utterly terrible, and ill-timed joke, because there has been an impressive amount of guilt about being a murderer and a father, all at the same time. 

"Jughead!" 

And the penny drops. 

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, don't murder people, don't beat people.  
> I would say don't get off on it, but Im not here to kink shame you, so. 
> 
> Well  
> i hope you liked it? I was talking with some of you on the comments on my last fic about doing a dark!jarchie so let me know what you guys think, I can definitely do more along the same lines if it interests anybody.  
> I always try and reply to comments within a day, if that's something y'all are interested in doing. 
> 
> anyways,  
> have a wonderful day, lovelies. :)
> 
> xx  
> Mads
> 
> My tumblr is blue-by-auster just send me a message/ask if you have prompts/questions/rants/whatever about basically anything.


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